PhD candidate Samuel Pelletier receives Trottier Grant

September 22, 2016

Doctoral student Samuel Pelletier has won a Trottier Grant.  Pelletier, a PhD candidate in Administration at HEC Montréal, earned one of three grants handed out by the Institut de l’énergie Trottier.

The institute’s awards encourage the next generation of scientists to take on the technological, social and economic issues facing the energy sector.

Pelletier, who will receive up to $43,000 over three years, will use his grant to help increase the efficiency of electric vehicles for parcel deliveries in a city. His work will be overseen by Professors Gilbert Laporte (Decision Sciences) and Ola Jabali (Logistics and Operations Management). By looking at the transport of goods, he’ll be taking on a sector with a large carbon footprint in Quebec.

For his research, he will devise a mathematical formula to help minimize both the number of electric trucks a delivery fleet requires and the cost to ship goods to a group of customers. Making batteries last longer is at the heart of this and has always represented one of the key financial and technological challenges of switching to electric vehicles. The work will have him looking at route planning and recharging strategies, as well as behavioural changes that can be employed to increase battery life.

Making electric operations more efficient and profitable will help Pelletier realize his ultimate goal with the research: to decrease the use of fossil fuels in urban areas.

The Trottier Grants program is open to students from Polytechnique Montréal, Université de Montréal and HEC Montréal.